Obama Signs $42B Small Biz Bill

President Obama on Monday concluded a fierce fight with congressional Republicans by signing into law a $42 billion small-business bill.

President Obama on Monday concluded a fierce fight with congressional Republicans by signing into law a $42 billion small-business bill.

The signing ceremony ended a months-long battle over legislation Obama had hoped to move in July, before Congress entered a monthlong recess. Instead, the bill was approved by the House last week and will become law just more than a month before the crucial midterm elections.

Obama on Monday blamed Republicans for holding up the package, saying they had “needlessly delayed this relief.”

At a signing ceremony in the White House East Room, where he was surrounded by small-business owners and lawmakers, Obama said the passage and signing of the bill is “a great victory for America’s entrepreneurs.”

While the president thanked Sens. George Voinovich (Ohio) and George LeMieux (Fla.), the only two Republicans to support the bill, he castigated the rest of the GOP for blocking the bill in the Senate for months.

“I regret that this was blocked for months by the Republican minority,” Obama said. “And that needlessly delayed this relief.”

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House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) used the occasion to blast Obama for not extending the Bush tax cuts across the board. Republicans insist that by letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, Obama will be increasing taxes on small businesses and further retarding the economic recovery.The word retarding would have been better used at the beginning of that paragraph.

If your political opponents start pushing your platform, that’s a victory, isn’t it? That way you get to say that everyone agrees that your ideas are good.

Worse, if your opponent adopts your platform and passes it despite you, then you look like you put your own power before the good of the country. I really think that this Republican strategy of obstructionism no matter the policy is ill-advised. The only ones working to put Republicans in office this year are the Democrats.